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Retromat.org – by Corinna Baldauf
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Set the stage

How’s your battery? (#143)

Check in on everybody’s well-being
Source: Anh Bui
If your phone battery runs low you look for a charger. With human beings it is harder to tell when they need to recharge. That’s why we use this activity to ask explicitly: Prepare a flipchart by outlining one battery per participant.

Ask each participant to color in their battery to show how much energy they currently have. Reflect together on the results, e. g. by asking “What do you notice?” – especially if someone is low on energy (“What would help you save or even gain energy?”)

Depending on how much time you want to invest you can do rounds of collecting and reflecting on:
  • What costs you energy at work?
  • What gives you energy?
  • What can you do to gain energy – short-term / long-term?
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Gather data

Lines of Communication (#86)

Visualize how information flows in, out and around the team
Source: Tarmo Aidantausta
Is information not flowing as well as it needs to? Do you suspect bottlenecks? Visualize the ways information flows to find starting points for improvements. If you want to look at one specific flow (e.g. product requirements, impediments, ...) check out Value Stream Mapping (#79). For messier situations try something akin to Cause-Effect-Diagrams (#25).
Look at the finished drawing. Where are delays or dead ends?
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Generate insights

5 Whys (#8)

Drill down to the root cause of problems by repeatedly asking 'Why?'
Source: Agile Retrospectives
Divide the participants into small groups (<= 4 people) and give each group one of the top identified issues. Instructions for the group:
  • One person asks the others 'Why did that happen?' repeatedly to find the root cause or a chain of events
  • Record the root causes (often the answer to the 5th 'Why?')
Let the groups share their findings.
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Decide what to do

Impediments Cup (#88)

Impediments compete against each other in a World Cup style
Source: Pascal Martin, inspired by Boris Gloger's 'Bubble Up'
Prepare a flip chart with a playing schedule for quarter-final, semi-final and final. All participants write down actions on a post-it until you have eight actions. Shuffle them and randomly place them on the playing schedule.
The team now has to vote for one of the two actions in each pair. Move the winning action to the next round until you have a winner of the impediments cup.

If you want to take on more than one or two actions you can play the match for third place.
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Close the retrospective

Feedback Door - Numbers (ROTI) (#14)

Gauge participants' satisfaction with the retro on a scale from 1 to 5 in minimum time
Source: ALE 2011, Corinna Baldauf
Put sticky notes on the door with the numbers 1 through 5 on them. 1 is the topmost and best, 5 the lowest and worst.When ending the retrospective, ask your participants to put a sticky to the number they feel reflects the session. The sticky can be empty or have a comment or suggestion on it.
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Retromat contains 127 activities, allowing for 8349005 combinations (25x30x22x22x23+5) and we are constantly adding more.

Created by Corinna Baldauf

Corinna wished for something like Retromat during her Scrummaster years. Eventually she just built it herself in the hope that it would be useful to others, too. Any questions, suggestions or encouragement? You can email her or follow her on Twitter. If you like Retromat you might also like Corinna's blog and her summaries on Wall-Skills.com.

Co-developed by Timon Fiddike

Timon gives Scrum trainings. He mentors advanced scrum masters and advanced product owners. Human, dad, nerd, contact improv & tango dancer. He has used Retromat since 2013 and started to build new features in 2016. You can email him or follow him on Twitter. Photo © Ina Abraham.